Introduction to Rust for Blockchain Development

Developed by the Technical Education team at the Web3 Foundation, this course introduces programming in Rust for Blockchain applications.

This course follows the free textbook The Rust Programming Language by Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols, with the addition of hands-on examples, in-browser executable snippets, and some patterns commonly found in blockchain-based development.

This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of Rust to people who know the basics of programming in another language, and are curious about why Rust is used and how to use it.

This course provides a strong foundation in general-purpose Rust. Also, it emphasizes some aspects of Rust (such as [no_std], advanced traits, and the use of Rust & Wasm development toolchain) that are particularly useful when developing with the Substrate blockchain framework.

Module 1 - Why Learn Rust?

• What is Rust?
• Why Rust is the future
• WASM TLDR & its relation to Rust

Module 2 - Rust 101 - The Basics

• Variables & Mutability
• Data Types
• The Heap vs. The Stack
• Functions & Comments
• Loops & Logic Flows

Module 3 - Intro to Intermediate Rust: Ownership, Borrowing, & Slices

• Rust’s Ownership Model
• Rust’s Borrowing Model
• Slices in Rust

Module 4 - Intro to Intermediate Rust: Enums & Matching Patterns

• Enums
• Panic! in Rust
• Error handling with Result & Option

Module 5 - Intro to Intermediate Rust - Data Structs & Collections

• Structs
• Defining Methods for Structs
• Vectors, Strings & Hashmaps
• Vectors vs Strings - what’s the difference?

Module 6 - Intro to Advanced Rust - Traits, Generics, & Lifetimes

• Defining behavior with Traits
• Reducing Duplication with Generics
• Associated Types vs Generics
• Lifetimes in Rust

Module 7 - Intro to Advanced Rust - Iterators & Closures

• Using Closures for Ultimate Code Reuse
• Using Iterators with Vectors
• Macros

Module 8 - Learning Cargo, Rust’s Package Management System & Unit Testing

• Defining & Reading cargo.toml
• Installing a crate
• Defining features for a crate
• Unit Tests in Rust